The FARMS Review 20/1 (2008) > Some Puzzles from the Joseph Smith Papyriby:
John Gee

Some Puzzles from
the Joseph Smith Papyri

John Gee

Although the concept of preexistence is alluded to in
various Latter-day Saint scriptures, the clearest discussion comes from the
Book of Abraham, and it is almost the only reason that Latter-day Saints use
that book. Of the 378 quotations of the Book of Abraham in general conferences
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1942, 238, or 63
percent, come from the section on the preexistence in Abraham 3:18–28.[1]
The next most commonly cited passage is the section on the Abrahamic covenant
in Abraham 2:6–11, which is cited 43 times for 11 percent of the
citations. This situation is mirrored in the church's lesson manuals, where the
Book of Abraham is cited 206 times—again the section on the preexistence
is the most commonly cited (28 percent) and the Abrahamic covenant is second
(22 percent).[2]
Whatever else the Book of Abraham says is of comparatively minor importance to
Latter-day Saints. My topic, therefore, a mote in our eyes but a beam in the
eyes of the critics, is irrelevant to the doctrine of Christ.

Some individuals are so intimately acquainted with the discussions
about the Book of Abraham and the Joseph Smith Papyri that they are inseparably
wedded to them. Some are somewhat acquainted with the arguments but perhaps not
yet on a first-name basis. Others are vaguely aware that some discussion exists
but have not yet been introduced to it. I hope I have something for all of
these groups. For those who are new to the discussion, allow me to introduce
what I affectionately refer to as the mess of the Joseph Smith Papyri.

The fullest discussion of the origins of the Joseph Smith
Papyri in the church's curriculum materials is in the Gospel Doctrine manual
for the Old Testament, which says, "The book of Abraham is a translation
that the Prophet Joseph Smith made from some Egyptian papyri."[3]
That is it. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has no official
position on how the Book of Abraham was translated or from what papyrus. That
the church takes no official position, however, does not mean that individual
members do not have some opinions on the subject. Church members tend to fall
into four groups regarding the translation of the Book of Abraham. The smallest
group, comprising about one-half of 1 percent of Mormons—according to my
informal, admittedly unscientific surveys—thinks that Joseph Smith
translated the Book of Abraham from the existing fragments that were in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. The next largest group thinks that Joseph Smith
translated the Book of Abraham from papyrus fragments that no longer exist. About
one-third think there is or was no connection between the Book of Abraham and
any papyrus fragments. The largest group, more than half of church members, do
not care where the Book of Abraham came from. Critics routinely assert that the
Latter-day Saint position is the one that is actually the least popular of all.
They want it to be our position because it is the most convenient straw man.
The only eyewitness to the translation process to describe it was Joseph Smith's
scribe Warren Parrish, who after he left the church claimed, "I have set
by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks as
he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration from Heaven."[4]
The majority of Latter-day Saints are probably comfortable leaving discussion
of the translation of the Book of Abraham at that, and I will leave it at that
here too except to say that no theory about the translation accounts for all
the evidence. I would, however, like to look at the papyri themselves and some
of the puzzles surrounding them, namely, What papyri did Joseph Smith have? and
What do we know about the ancient owners of the papyri?

Historical Overview

The saga of the Joseph
Smith Papyri begins in the early part of the nineteenth century during the
pillaging of Egypt that at that time passed for archaeology. One of those involved
in the plunder and pillage was Antonio Lebolo. He exhumed one of the most spectacular
caches of mummies and papyri from Thebes that Egyptology has ever known. (I
used to think the accounts of several hundred mummies[5] were vastly
exaggerated—I am no longer so sure.) Lebolo was acting as an agent
procuring antiquities for Bernadino Drovetti but kept a few for himself. These
were sent via Albano Oblasser to America, paraded around the country, and sold
off piecemeal until the remainder were sold by Michael Chandler to the Church
of Jesus Christ in July 1835. The church got four mummies and at least five
papyri. After the death of Joseph Smith's mother in 1856, the papyri were sold
to Abel Combs, who sold part of the collection to the Wood Museum in St. Louis,
which eventually relocated to Chicago and burned to the ground in the Chicago
Fire of 1871. The other part of the collection Combs kept for himself, and that
passed through various hands until it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in 1947. The Metropolitan Museum of Art knew that they had acquired "papyrus
fragments of hieratic Books of the Dead, once the property of the Mormon leader
Joseph Smith."[6]
"The Metropolitan Museum was fully aware of what the papyri were when they
first saw them in 1918, and they knew what they were doing when they acquired
them." Klaus Baer recalled, "I saw photographs of them for the first
time in 1963, I believe, and was asked at the time, on my honor not to tell anyone
where they were and to keep the whole thing confidential."[7]
The guard had changed at the museum, and the new curators were not as keen to
have the papyri as the previous curators had been. Henry Fischer, curator of
the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late
1960s, explained how the museum decided to deal with their religious hot
potato: "We knew, since [Aziz Atiya] worked in Salt Lake City and was acquainted
with leaders of the Mormon Church, that he might very tactfully find out how
they felt about it. So we simply informed him about this in confidence, and I
think he handled the matter very nicely."[8] The
newspapers garbled the story by wrongly making Atiya the discoverer of the
documents, which disturbed Fischer. He wrote to Atiya as follows:

Although I was already aware that your version of the "discovery"
of these documents had caused considerable confusion, it was startling to read
that you had informed me of their existence.

While I have taken pains to avoid any outright contradictions
of what you have said, I do not see why either I or the other members of my
department—past and present—should be put in the position of being
ignorant about facts we could not fail to have known.[9]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art gave the papyri back to the
church in 1967. The papyri have now remained in one set of hands for the
longest time since their excavation.

Physical Papyri

The papyri we currently have are eleven groups of fragments
from three different papyri, containing two partial copies of what is usually
misnamed "the Book of the Dead" and part of a copy of what is usually
misnamed "the Document of Breathings Made by Isis." The extant
fragments do not contain any text from the Book of Abraham.

We know what we currently have, but how much papyri did Joseph
Smith have? Critics want to minimize the amount of papyri originally owned by
Joseph Smith, preferably to an amount not much more than what we currently
have, because they do not want a Book of Abraham to have ever existed. As
Richard Bushman has noted, "people who have broken away from Mormonism . .
. have to justify their decision to leave. They cannot countenance evidence of
divine inspiration in [Joseph Smith's] teachings without catching themselves in
a disastrous error."[10]
So critics who have left the
church cannot allow Joseph Smith to have gotten anything right, even as
a guess or by accident. They will go to extreme lengths and propound convoluted
theories to have something else, anything else, to believe in. The critic Dale
Morgan, himself such a defector, wrote in a moment of candor: "With my
point of view on God, I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith
and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can
Joseph Smith's story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for
explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church."[11]
So the critics cannot allow themselves to say, as Latter-day Saints can say, "Whether
or not there was a Book of Abraham actually contained on the portion of papyri
that did not survive is something that cannot be determined by scholarly means."

A Latter-day Saint who
has faith, that is, trust in God, can examine such issues without being
bothered or without having to know all the answers to all the questions we
might have. In fact, insisting on the answers to all our little questions is a
sign of a lack of faith or trust; for example, if we insist that our spouse or
employees must account for every moment out of our presence, it is a sign that
we do not have faith or trust in them. Abraham, for example, was able to say, "Thy
servant has sought thee earnestly; now I have found thee; thou didst send thine
angel to deliver me from the gods of Elkenah, and I will do well to hearken to
thy voice" (Abraham 2:12–13). He trusted God on the basis of one
past experience without having to know all the details about how the Lord was
going to fulfill his promises. Likewise, a Latter-day Saint who trusts God and
his prophets, that is, spokesmen, does not need to see the actual Egyptian
characters on the papyrus or know any of the details about the translation of
the Book of Abraham in order to accept it and act with confidence that this
life is a time of testing when God "will prove [us] herewith to see if
[we] will do all things whatsoever the Lord [our] God shall command [us]"
(Abraham 3:25). This is the reason why, for the vast majority of Latter-day
Saints, the particulars of the translation of the Book of Abraham are not an
issue.

Still, "as all have not faith"—and most of
us either want faith or desire to help those who want it—we are commanded
to "seek learning, even by study and also by faith" (Doctrine and
Covenants 88:118). Learning is a partial substitute for and an aid to faith. So
what do we actually know about the papyri Joseph Smith had?

Between the current fragments and some very bad copies of
characters from the papyri, we know that Joseph Smith had papyri or portions of
papyri from at least five individuals:

° Horos, son of Osoroeris and Chibois

°
Semminis, daughter of Eschons

°
Amenothis, son of Tanoub

°
a woman with the unique name of Noufianoub

° a man named Sesonchis

Comparing the copies of the papyri with the fragments
indicates that in no case do we have a complete record of what Joseph Smith had
from these two sources alone.

Eyewitnesses from the Nauvoo period (1839–1844)
describe "a quantity of records, written on papyrus, in Egyptian
hieroglyphics,"[12]
including (1) some papyri "preserved under glass,"[13]
described as "a number of glazed slides, like picture frames, containing
sheets of papyrus, with Egyptian inscriptions and hieroglyphics";[14]
(2) "a long roll of manuscript"[15] that
contained the Book of Abraham;[16]
(3) "another roll";[17]
and (4) "two or three other small pieces of papyrus, with astronomical
calculations, epitaphs, &c."[18] Only the
mounted fragments ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and were subsequently
given back to the Church of Jesus Christ. The eyewitnesses not only describe
the papyri, but they also describe specific vignettes or pictures on the
papyri. When eyewitnesses described the vignettes as being on the papyri
mounted under glass, they can be matched with the fragments from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the other hand, when the vignettes are described
as being on the rolls, the descriptions do not match any of the currently
surviving fragments. Gustav Seyffarth's 1859 catalog of the museum in St. Louis
indicates that some of the Joseph Smith Papyri were there.[19] Those papyri
moved with the Wood Museum to Chicago and were burned in the Chicago Fire in
1871. Whatever we conjecture their contents to be is only that: conjecture.

Both Mormon and non-Mormon eyewitnesses from the nineteenth
century agree that it was a "roll of papyrus from which [Joseph Smith]
translated the Book of Abraham,"[20] meaning the "long
roll of manuscript," and not one of the mounted fragments that eventually
ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[21] So the
intellectual position that some members follow and that the critics would have
us adopt as the position of the
church is not in accord with the historical evidence.

How big were the rolls?

One way to answer that question is to take the standard size
for a papyrus roll and just use that. "In the Ptolemaic period a roll was
usually c. 320 cm long and c. 32 cm high."[22] I have used
such estimates before, but those figures are not entirely satisfactory. As Mark
Depauw has pointed out in a later study, the measurements of papyri vary
throughout the Ptolemaic period, with different standards applying at different
times.[23]

One can take a more scientific—that is,
mathematical—approach because the circumference of a scroll limits the
amount of scroll that can be contained inside it. Thus, we can determine by the
size of the circumference and the tightness of the winding how much papyrus can
be missing at the interior end of a papyrus roll. Friedhelm Hoffmann has
already developed such a formula in calculating the amount of material missing
from the end of Papyrus Spiegelberg, from which he was able to determine that
there were five columns missing from the text.[24] I will not
bore you with the derivation of the formula; it has been in print over a
decade. If S = the average difference between the winding measurement, and E =
the length of the last winding, then the theoretical length of the missing
portion is Z, so that Z=((E2-6.25)/2S)-E.[25] We can apply
this to the Joseph Smith Papyri and obtain some usable results.

For the scroll of Noufianoub, the final winding length is
7.8 cm and the average difference is .33 cm. The formula says that there are 74
cm missing, which is just over 2 feet. Thus this vignette was at the very end
of the roll it was on. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing how much was
missing from the beginning of the scroll.

For the Semminis scroll, the final winding length is 14 cm
and the average difference is .25 cm. Thus there were 365.5 cm left in the
scroll. This is the equivalent of 143.9 inches, or nearly 12 feet. The vignette
in Joseph Smith Papyrus II is the furthest vignette into the Semminis scroll
and normally occurs about halfway through the Book of the Dead,[26]
which means that the total scroll would be about 20 to 24 feet long. This is
longer than some scrolls[27]
but shorter than others.[28]

For the scroll of Horos, the initial winding length is 9.7
cm, the last winding is 9.5 cm, and there are seven windings in total. This
leaves us with an average value of .03333 for S. E is, as already stated, 9.5
cm. Plugging this into the equation gives 1250.5 cm of missing papyrus. This is
the equivalent of 492.3 inches, or 41 feet of missing papyrus. Would such a
thing be unusual? No. P. Turin 1791 is 57 feet 3 inches (= 1745 cm) long,[29]
P. Nesmin is 1280 cm long,[30]
and the ritual roll of Imouthes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is 1088.6 cm,[31]
428.6 inches, or 35 feet 8 inches long, while his Book of the Dead is longer
still. So such a length is not out of the question. While we know that the
scroll of Horos had a text of the Document of Breathings Made by Isis, about
one in four of those documents contain additional texts.[32] So the
presence of additional texts would not be unusual.

The size of Horos's scroll at first seems excessive, even
though it is not unheard of. When I first plugged the numbers in a few years
ago and got the result, I checked the measurements and then checked them again.
Then I checked the formula again. Then I rechecked the formula's derivation.
Then I rechecked the assumptions behind the formula. Then I simply dismissed
them and went back to the standard roll length. I had always assumed that the
Semminis roll would be the longer one since the Book of the Dead is a much
longer composition than the Document of Breathings Made by Isis and my initial
estimates of the length of the Semminis roll, based on the length of the text
preserved and the percentage of the Book of the Dead preserved, had been almost
twenty feet. It was only after plugging the numbers from the other Joseph Smith
Papyri into the formula that I realized that the formula does give reasonable
results. I have since realized that having a long roll of Horos brings all the
nineteenth-century eyewitnesses into agreement.

One might thoughtlessly suppose that one could make measurements
from just any photograph. Most of the photographs, however, are not to scale
(and making measurements of the Statue of Liberty from photographs, for
example, might lead to the conclusion that it is only two inches high). Even if
the photographs were to scale, photography can also introduce other
distortions. Measurements from photographs are suspect and extremely
susceptible to distortion. Calculations from such sources are therefore
problematic.

If we look at the nineteenth-century eyewitnesses and ask
the question, Which of the five known rolls that Joseph Smith had do the
eyewitnesses identify as the source of the Book of Abraham? we come up with
some useful information. Charlotte Haven and Jerusha Blanchard identify the
long roll as being the source of the Book of Abraham (see notes 16 and 17). On
the other hand, William Appleby identifies the Book of Abraham as having been
written by a poor scribe,[33]
which matches the Horos roll. Only if the Horos roll is longer than the
Semminis roll do the nineteenth-century eyewitnesses agree. And for that to be
the case, the unmounted portion of the Horos roll has to be longer than the
twelve feet left on the Semminis roll. One could take the average for S of only
the last four windings (.05 cm) and still come up with a value for Z of 830.5
cm, or 27 feet 3 inches, and Horos's roll would still be longer than the
Semminis roll and well within the range of comparable Ptolemaic rolls.

Furthermore, a lengthy
Horos roll accommodates the otherwise problematic testimony of Gustav
Seyffarth, who describes Facsimile 3, which is on the roll of Horos, and claims
that a portion of the text he saw was an invocation to Osiris.[34]
If all there was on the Horos roll was the Document of Breathings Made by Isis,
then the problem is that there is no invocation to Osiris in the portion of
that text that Seyffarth would have seen, or anywhere in the document for that
matter. With a longer roll, Seyffarth's testimony can be accounted for because
there would certainly be room for an invocation to Osiris on the roll (if
Seyffarth is accurate in his interpretation) and who knows what else.

Horos, Son of Osoroeris

Although scholarship is
unable to tell us whether or not there was a Book of Abraham on the roll of
Horos, perhaps we can tell something about the individual who owned the papyrus
and the likelihood that the Book of Abraham might have interested him. To do so
requires moving from the mess of the Joseph Smith Papyri to their message. The
puzzle that is before us is to determine what we can know about Horos.

The beginning of the roll of Horos lists Horos's name,
titles, and parents. Horos bore three titles, or high-ranking positions, at
some point in his life, perhaps concurrently, perhaps sequentially: prophet of
Amonrasonter, prophet of Min who Massacres his Enemies, and prophet of
Chespisichis. The last two titles are rare, the second one being extremely rare
(only four men are known to have borne it).

Horos's names and titles allow him to be linked with a
number of other texts, such as an inscription on the statue of his father, now
in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore.[35] These texts
yield a family tree covering eight generations from Horos's grandfather to his
great-great-great-grandsons. Thanks to a graffito on the small temple of
Medinet Habu, we can date the family. Horos's third-great-grandson was alive in
37 BC under the reign of Cleopatra
VII, his son died before 153 BC,
and two of his grandsons died between 146 and 124 BC. This would place Horos as roughly contemporary with
Ptolemy V, which means that this roll from the Joseph Smith Papyri was contemporary
with the Rosetta Stone.[36]
Horos probably lived through the revolt of Haronnophris and Chaonnophris,[37]
and the priests of Amonrasonter seem to have some special connection with the revolt.[38]
Horos was also probably well acquainted with all three of the languages of the
Rosetta Stone. Two of them, hieroglyphs and Demotic, he probably knew better
than any Egyptologist alive today.

Horos's titles link him directly with three of the temples
at Karnak. Prophet of Amonrasonter links him as prophet in the main temple at
Karnak. Prophet of Min who Massacres his Enemies links him with the Montu
temple north of the main temple. Prophet of Chespisichis links him with the
small temple of Chespisichis southwest of the main temple. Let's take these
titles in order.

The first title is
prophet of Amonrasonter. This means that he was employed in the great temple of
Karnak. We know a considerable amount about this temple, the largest surviving
one in Egypt.[39]
As prophet, he probably would have been initiated in the festival hall.[40]
We have two of its daily rituals preserved. In the first of them, the prophet
lit a lamp and an incense burner and chanted on his way into the holy of
holies. There he saw God and worshipped him face to face.[41] The other
daily ritual was the execration ritual, in which a wax figure of an
enemy—with the enemy's name written in fresh ink[42]—was
spat upon,[43]
trampled under the left foot,[44]
smitten with a spear,[45]
bound,[46]
and placed on the fire.[47]
Any priest or prophet at Karnak would have been intimately acquainted with both
of these rituals. The temple also had a library that would have had king-lists,
annals, prophecies and chronicles, compendia of each nome, medical texts,
wisdom and ethical teachings, books of lucky days, dream interpretation
manuals, astrological and astronomical texts, lexi­cal texts, geographies,
festival books, ritual books, glorification texts, hymns, cult prescriptions,
construction manuals, manuals of painting and relief, manuals of purification,
offering manuals, calendars of feasts, manuals of cultic receipts, inventories,
property-list instructions, oracle texts, priestly correspondence, temple
day-books, and accounts.[48]
From the library in Thebes, the earlier Greek writer Hecataeus wrote an account
of Abraham.[49]

Horos was also
prophet of Min who Massacres his Enemies. The term for "massacre," sm3, "to slay," "is also the
verb used of slaughtering or sacrificing animals" and can be used as a
term for the "sacrificial offering."[50] "The
texts specify that this is done by the knife held in the right hand and the foe
in the left or with the harpoon. The [sacrifice] is dismembered and portions of
him are put into the brazier as offerings."[51] The term for
enemy, ḫryw,[52] can also
mean "sacrificial victim."[53] The only
place where representations of the rituals associated with Min who Massacres
his Enemies appear is on the interior portions of the Bab el Abd, the gate in
the enclosure wall of the Montu temple north of the great temple of Amun at
Karnak.[54]
The gate was built by the Pharaoh Ptolemy III Euergetes, the contemporary of
Horos's grandfather Chabonchonsis, who is the earliest known prophet of Min who
Massacres his Enemies, and the decoration finished by Ptolemy IV Philopater.[55]
Unlike most of the deities featured on the gateway, Min who Massacres his
Enemies did not have his own temple in the Montu complex because his rituals
were performed in the courtyard of the Montu temple.[56] Two rituals
are associated with him; one of them is labeled "subduing sinners,"[57]
and the other is the burning of enemies. Both scenes come from the execration
ritual. The first scene identifies Min who Massacres his Enemies with Reshep,[58]
a foreign deity imported into Egypt much earlier, and like many non-Egyptian
deities imported into Egypt, he is given a different Egyptian name. The second
scene says that he "smites his enemies in the temple of burning" and
then "burns them on the altar of burnt offerings."[59]
The gods also "overthrow your enemies in the slaughterhouse (nm.t),
they sacrifice [the enemy] in your altar (ʿḫ)."[60]

The term for this altar of burnt offerings, ʿḫ
(Coptic aÒ), is described in a number of contemporary texts:

P. Onchsheshonqy tells the story of a rebellion against
Pharaoh led by Harsiese, Pharaoh's chief physician. The plot is unsuccessful,
and the conspirators are rounded up. "Pharaoh caused an altar (ḫw3.t)
of earth to be built at the gate of Pharaoh's palace. He caused Harsiese, son
of Rameses to be placed on an altar (ʿḫ) of
copper with all the men who he had, and all the men who were in the plot
against Pharaoh."[61]

P. Vandier tells a story
of a group of priests who are jealous of Meryre and have him put to death so
that the Pharaoh can live longer and Pharaoh can marry Meryre's wife. But
Meryre appears to Pharaoh in a vision and reproves him. As a consequence,
Pharaoh "caused all the priests to be brought outside the prison. . . .
Pharaoh went with them to Heliopolis. He caused them to be killed . . . [He
caused] them to be placed on the altar (ʿḫ) before Mout
who carries her brother in Heliopolis."[62]

In P. Rylands IX, the cry goes forth against one set of
enemies, "Let our lord bring these young men, who have abandoned our ways,
and let them be placed on an altar (ʿḫ)!"[63]

P. Petese II, published in 2006, begins with the fragmentary
text, "Necho caused to set up . . . an altar (ʿš)
. . . you, yourself, they would have placed you on the altar,"[64]
and then unfortunately breaks off.

Thus stories about slaughtering and then burning people on
an altar were common in the time of the Joseph Smith Papyri, and Horos, the
owner of Joseph Smith Papyrus I, had a professional interest in such things.

The temple of Chespisichis
was first mentioned by Lepsius, who listed it as Temple V.[65] By 1885, when
Wiedemann visited the site, he found it "almost entirely in ruins."[66]
The temple walls had been disassembled and used to fence a garden, and the
inscriptions were "almost entirely destroyed," but he found some
(probably reused) blocks of the Eighteenth Dynasty king Thutmosis III
(1479–1425 BC), as well as
fragments from the Twenty-ninth Dynasty king Nepherites I (399–393 BC), Ptolemaic material, and some fragments
he thought belonged to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty king Piye.[67] Later work
indicates that the cult of Chespisichis seems to have existed only since the
Nineteenth Dynasty,[68]
where he is particularly known as a healer.[69] He is said
to be one who "publishes the book of death and life."[70]
He is a savior god who rescues from all manner of sickness, death, and
catastrophe.[71]
Two other places depict him: the temple of Tod, located a few miles south of
Thebes, and on the Ptolemaic gateway of the main Chonsu temple at Karnak. At
the Tod temple, the inscription refers to "subduing the weaklings (bdš.w, a derogatory
term for foreigners[72])"
and depicts a jackal-headed figure wielding knives under the name of Chespisichis.[73]

The only inscription that really remains of the temple of
Chespisichis is a single stele, now in the Louvre (C 284), more commonly known
as the Bentresh stele.[74]
Stylistically, the Bentresh stele most closely matches the style of Ptolemy IV,[75]
although Ptolemy III has also been argued.[76] Lanny Bell
reported the discovery of another copy of this text back in 1979, but he never
published it.[77]
The Bentresh stele tells the story of an otherwise unattested king named Ramses,
whose names are a mixture of those of Ramses II and Thutmosis III, who made his
annual trip to Mesopotamia to collect tribute. He marries a princess of
Bakhtan, perhaps a corruption of the Egyptian word for "Hittite"
rather than a reference to Bactria, modern Afghanistan.[78] When the
princess's sister Bentresh gets sick, first a priest is sent, and then the god
Chespisichis, to heal her of her illness—she had been possessed by an
angel. Finally, after many years, Chespisichis appears to the ruler of Bakhtan
in a dream and requests that he be sent back to Egypt, and much tribute comes
with him.

We can be fairly confident that as prophet of Chespisichis,
Horos would have read this text at some point in his life. The god appearing in
visions and dreams, Egyptian presence in Syria and Mesopotamia, angels
interfering in human affairs, sicknesses caused by spiritual beings, and a
savior—all of these are elements shared between the world of Horos and
the Book of Abraham.

Facsimile 1

Next in the roll of Horos is a vignette that we know as
Facsimile 1. The facsimiles from the Book of Abraham are three illustrations
floating like islands in the sea of thousands of pages of words in our
scriptures; hence they draw interest. Despite that interest, there is no
emphasis put on them in the church. Of the current curriculum materials,
Facsimile 1 is mentioned only once, in an optional enrichment activity in a lesson
for eight- through eleven-year-olds.[79] Facsimile 2
has been mentioned only once in general conferences of the church in the last
sixty-five years.[80]
I cannot help but wonder if the critics attack the facsimiles because they are
relatively insignificant in the church.

The facsimiles, like all vignettes, present a number of
challenges, and it is worth remembering a few things about (1) the placement of
vignettes, (2) the drawing of vignettes, and (3) the identification of figures
on vignettes.

(1) With regard to the placement of vignettes, I will
provide a number of quotations from Egyptologists about Late Period documents
in general and Ptolemaic texts in particular. The list is lengthy because it is
a common thing, but everyone seems to want to treat the Joseph Smith Papyri as
a special exception to a general rule, and I do not think we should do so. From
Malcolm Mosher, who specializes in Late Period religious texts: "In
documents from the 21st Dynasty on, misalignment of the text and vignette of a
spell can occur, with the text preceding the vignette, or vice versa."[81]
"While this type of problem can be observed sporadically from the late New
Kingdom on, it is more common in the Late Period."[82] "The
problem is particularly acute where more spells are textually represented for
such a group than there are vignettes. . . . It can be difficult to determine
which spells have a vignette and which do not."[83] "A
similar problem to misalignment frequently encountered in Late documents is
where the vignette for a particular spell is associated with the wrong text and
the correct text is not found in the document."[84] From Henk
Milde, probably the foremost authority on papyrus vignettes: "Unfortunately,
the connection between text and picture is not always clear cut."[85]
"One has to take into account at least the following difficulties in
vignette research, that are here placed in eight categories. . . . 1. Spatial
discrepancy between text and vignette. . . . 2. Incorrect combination of text
and vignette in the original. . . . 3. Incorrect combination of text and
vignette in studies and editions of the Book of the Dead. . . . 4. Unclear
relation between text and vignette. . . . 5. Transfer or omission of pictorial
elements. . . . 6. Emendation of the picture. . . . 7. Combination and
contamination of pictorial elements of different vignettes. . . . 8.
Conglomeration of texts under a vignette."[86] From
Jean-Claude Goyon, who has published so many Late Period Papyri: The vignettes "often
do not have but a very distant connection with the discussion written beneath."[87]
From Marc ƒtienne, of the Louvre: "The vignettes do not always correspond
to the chapters which the text prescribes."[88] This is
particularly the case in Documents of Breathings Made by Isis: "The
relation between the vignettes and the text is not straightforward. . . . The
vignettes are not meant to illustrate the contents of the composition."[89]
In other words, the vignettes in the Document of Breathings Made by Isis
usually do not match the text and may not even belong to it. This would explain
why "the vignette of the P. Joseph Smith I" represents "new
themes and contain[s] a variety of unique features."[90] The vignette
in P. Joseph Smith I is, in fact, unique. After looking at vignettes in thousands
of documents from the Saite period on, I have not found any exact match or
anything really very close.

(2) Furthermore, in vignettes from the Ptolemaic period, "the
genders of the various figures are often incorrect. . . . The genders of
priests and deities are occasionally confused."[91]

(3) Finally, I wish to mention something about the perils of
identifying iconography in vignettes. The bulk of iconographic study in
Egyptology is based on New Kingdom material, and there is a danger in applying
such iconographic experience to Ptolemaic materials from a millennium later.
For instance, in the New Kingdom, a jackal-headed figure might be Anubis, but
in the Ptolemaic period, jackal-headed figures might be Osiris, or Shesmu, or
Isdes, or the Khetiu, while Anubis might have a human or lion head.

Egyptologists, and many others, point to parallels in the
roof chapels of the Dendara Temple as parallels for Facsimile 1. There are over
forty lion couch scenes in these chapels, most of which are labeled as local
variants of the same scene. What the critics do not do, however, is read the
inscriptions. In the Dendara texts, the word for the lion couch, nm.t,[92]
is either homophonous or identical with the word nm.t, "abattoir,
slaughterhouse,"[93]
as well as a term for "offerings."[94] This is
picked up in the inscriptions. For example, in the central scene in the
innermost eastern chapel, we read, "He will not exist nor will his name
exist, since you will destroy his town, cast down the walls of his house, and
everyone who is in it will be set on fire, you will demolish his district, you
will stab his confederates,[95]
his flesh being ashes, the evil conspirator consigned to the lion couch / slaughterhouse,[96]
so that he will no longer exist."[97] In another
scene, Bastet (who is not pictured) "is your protection every day; she has
commanded her messengers[98]
to slaughter your enemies."[99]
Symmetrical with this scene we have another scene with a broken inscription
that mentions "ashes" and continues, "to burn his flesh with
fire."[100]
So here we have both a scene and descriptions that parallel the Book of
Abraham. Furthermore, in the same chapel we have depictions of Anubis and the
sons of Horus (presumably the figures under the lion couch in Facsimile 1) holding
knives. Anubis is here identified as the one "who smites the adversaries
with his might, since the knife is in his hand, to expel the one who treads in
transgression; I am the violent one who came forth from god, after having cut
off the heads of the confederates of him whose name is evil."[101]
The human-headed son of Horus is identified above his head as "the one who
repulses enemies" and "who comes tearing out (šd)
the enemies who butchers (tḫs)
the sinners."[102]
The baboon-headed son of Horus says: "I have slaughtered those who create
injuries in the house of God in his presence; I take away the breath from his
nostrils."[103]
The jackal-headed son of Horus says: "I cause the hostile foreigners to
retreat."[104]
Finally, the falcon-headed son of Horus says: "I have removed rebellion (ḥ3y)."[105]
So the inscriptions from Dendara associate the lion couch scene with the
sacrificial slaughter of enemies. Nor are they the only depictions of lion
couch scenes to do so. A papyrus in Berlin, for example, contains instructions
that it is "to stab (or cut)[106]
your disobedient ones,[107]
to sacrifice your apostates, to overthrow your enemies every day."[108]
"May your flames shoot out against your enemies each and every day so that
you remain while your adversaries are overthrown."[109] Another
frequently occurring lion couch scene contains the description "the lords
of truth . . . cause the sacrifice of the evildoers."[110] This is
interpreted as being either "Seth and Isdes"[111] (a knife-wielding
jackal-headed deity),[112]
or "Sobek (a deity usually depicted as a crocodile), who is in the water."[113]
The Sons of Horus, "Imseti, Hapi, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef,"[114]
are described as forming "the council around (or behind) Osiris who cause
the sacrifice of the evildoers"[115] by "placing
knives into the evil doers" and "incinerating the souls of the
evil-doers."[116]
They are said to be "put in place by Anubis."[117] Excluding a
sacrificial dimension to lion couch scenes is un-Egyptian, even if we cannot
come up with one definitive reading at this time.

Document of Breathings

The next thing we know for certain is that the roll of Horos
was misnamed Document of Breathings Made by Isis. Why is it misnamed? The
problem comes with the interpretation of the term snsn as "breathing,"
an interpretation that goes back to Heinrich Brugsch's 1868 dictionary.[118]
But as recent studies have shown, snsn never means "to
breathe."[119]
Instead, here it means something like "to fraternize, fellowship,
associate, join." Quaegebeur has suggested that it be interpreted as a
Letter of Recommendation Made by Isis;[120] the
translation of breathing permit is simply impossible. Examination of the titles
of those who possessed a copy of this text[121] shows that
almost all the men were prophets of Amonrasonter, while the women held
corresponding feminine titles. Most of the possessors of the text are known to
be members of the same family, and the rest probably were as well.

It is commonplace among the critics to assert that this
document is a prayer to an Egyptian god. This, however, is unsustainable by any
careful reading of the document itself. The majority of the text consists of "words
spoken by the gods who follow Osiris"[122] to the individual[123]
and employs a formula that is used to address mortals rather than gods.[124]
Space will not permit much exploration of this fascinating text; those interested can see the second edition of the
late Professor Hugh Nibley's commentary Message of
the Joseph Smith Papyri. I only
note that Professor Nibley's commentary in no way exhausts the possibilities.

Facsimile 3

The last item known to be on the roll of Horos was Facsimile
3, for which I have published some preliminary explorations in an appropriate
Egyptological venue. I also note that every single facsimile from the Book of
Abraham has been connected to Abraham using ancient Egyptian evidence and that
the connection has been made in Egyptological publications.

Conclusions

Since, for the most part, Latter-day Saints and
Egyptologists agree that the preserved portions of the Joseph Smith Papyri do
not contain the Book of Abraham, there is the possibility of detente between
the two because scholarship cannot tell what was or was not on the missing
papyri. Egyptologists could stick to what is knowable from the remains, and
Latter-day Saints could trust God about the origins of the Book of Abraham. Our
trust (or faith) in God becomes, for those fortunate enough to possess it, "the
basis of what we hope for, the evidence of things unseen" (Hebrews 11:1,
my translation). Those who have it require no other proof. Those who have
chosen not to trust God will not "be persuaded, though one rose from the
dead" (Luke 16:31). If we had the papyrus from which the Book of Abraham
was translated—and I testify that we do not—the critics would not
believe it; and most of them could not read it anyway. One of the ironies of
the Joseph Smith Papyri is that critics (and even some Egyptologists), who are
quick to point out what the papyri are not, are otherwise uninterested in what
they contain. They could be a laundry list, a get-well card, or the greatest
piece of literature ever written; it does not matter so long as they are not
the Book of Abraham, so long as they are not scripture, so long as they do not
contain the words of God, so long as they are not conveyed by a prophet of God.
Here, though, is another great irony. The Rosetta Stone ends with a passage
that directs that it be written "on a stone stele in the writing of words
of god (hieroglyphs), the writing of letters (Demotic), and the script of the
foreigners (Greek)."[125]
For the Egyptians, hieroglyphs are literally the "words of God." For
the Egyptians, the Joseph Smith Papyri contain the words of God, conveyed by a
prophet of God, just as for Latter-day Saints, the Book of Abraham contains the
words of God, conveyed by a prophet of God.

Notes

[1]This
article is based on a presentation given at the 2007 FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic
Information and Research) conference in Sandy, Utah.

Information
taken from http://scriptures.byu.edu/ (accessed 28 August 2008).

[2]From an
analysis of the curriculum materials on http://lds.org. This includes Primary,
Aaronic Priesthood, Young Women, Sunday School, Relief Society, and Melchizedek
Priesthood materials. It does not include missionary, seminary, or institute
materials.

[23]Mark Depauw,
"The Royal Format of Early Ptolemaic Demotic Papyri," in Acts of the
Seventh International Conference of Demotic Studies, ed. Kim Ryholt
(Copenhagen: The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, University
of Copenhagen, 2002), 85−100, specifically 89. Readers of Depauw, whose
native language is not English, should note that he consistently interchanges
the terms "height" and "width," meaning in all cases "height."

[81]Malcolm Mosher
Jr., "The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead in the Late Period: A Study of
Revisions Evident in Evolving Vignettes, and the Possible Chronological or
Geographical Implications for Differing Versions of Vignettes" (PhD diss.,
University of California at Berkeley, 1989), 1:53.

[91]Malcolm
Mosher Jr., "The Book of the Dead Tradition at Akhmim during the Late
Period," in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the
Great to the Arab Conquest, ed. A. Egberts, B. P. Muhs, and J. van
der Vliet (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), 206−7.

The views expressed in Maxwell Institute publications are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.